Information display devices, and in particular portable information display devices, have become commonplace in everyday life for the purposes of communication, navigation, entertainment, etc. Typically such information display devices are not passive display devices but include a processor and memory which cooperate to provide an execution environment in which a software operating system may be established, and various software programs may be run to provide the device with interactive display and information processing functions. Furthermore, such devices generally include one or more user input interfaces that allow a user to interact with and control the device. An electronic display screen is provided as an output interface for relaying information to the user. The display screen may be configured to provide a touch sensitive display that can also be used as a user input interface.
In such devices the electronic display screen is usually a colour display in the form of a substantially rectangular screen. Modern manufacturing techniques are not yet able to produce colour display screens, e.g. based on LED or LCD technology, that are non-rectangular for the size of screen which is typical for handheld use, e.g. at least 2.4 inches (6 cm). The rectangular geometry of the underlying display screen is carried over into the overall shape of the information display device, so that the device has a rectangular frame around the screen. Device designers are constrained to this rectangular geometry. Some information display devices can include physical user input buttons in the frame surrounding the rectangular screen. However, there tends to be very little functionality provided by the frame outside the rectangular display screen.
The present invention seeks to provide improvements in portable information display devices.